Auschwitz concentration camp

Listen first to the gravel under your feet. It is the same sound in every season, a dry crunch that follows you between the rows of red brick buildings. Tall poplar trees line the paths. In summer their leaves move in the wind, and in winter the branches stand bare against a grey sky. It is quiet here, even with many people around you. Most visitors lower their voices without being asked.

You are standing in Auschwitz, the largest camp built by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It sits on the edge of the Polish town of Oświęcim. Germany annexed this area after its invasion of Poland in 1939. The Germans gave the town a German name, Auschwitz, and that name became the name of the camp. Today the site is a memorial and museum. It exists so that people can see the evidence with their own eyes.

These brick buildings are older than the camp. They were first built as barracks, and before the war they belonged to the Polish army. In 1940, the German SS turned them into a concentration camp. The first large transport arrived in June 1940. It brought Polish political prisoners from the town of Tarnów. In the early period, most prisoners here were Poles. Later, the purpose of the camp changed, and the scale of the killing grew far beyond those first months.

Look up at the entrance gate. The iron letters read Arbeit macht frei, which means work makes you free. It was a lie written in metal. Now look closely at the letter B in the word Arbeit. The top loop is larger than the bottom one, so the letter appears upside down. Prisoners in the camp metal workshop made this sign. Many people today read the inverted letter as a small act of defiance, though no one can say for certain why it was made that way.

The sign itself has its own modern story. In December 2009, thieves stole it from the gate. Police in Poland found it within days. The thieves had cut it into several pieces. The museum restored the original sign, and a copy now hangs above the entrance. The theft shocked people across the world. It also showed how much this small piece of iron now means to survivors, to their families, and to everyone who comes here.

Inside, many blocks now hold exhibitions. Some rooms are very difficult to enter. Behind glass, you will see objects taken from people who arrived here: shoes, eyeglasses, kitchen pots, prosthetic limbs, and suitcases. Many suitcases still carry names and addresses, painted in white letters by their owners. These people expected to need their belongings again. In one room, there is a large mass of human hair, cut from victims by the SS. Photography is not permitted in that room, out of respect.

Near the end of the main street stands Block 11. Prisoners called it the death block. In its basement were small cells used for punishment and starvation. In September 1941, the SS tested the poison gas Zyklon B here for the first time, on Soviet prisoners of war and on sick inmates. Zyklon B was a pesticide. In this camp, it became the main tool of mass murder. The cells below are narrow and cold, and the walls still carry marks.

One story from Block 11 is told often, and it is well documented. In 1941, a Polish Catholic priest named Maximilian Kolbe was a prisoner here. After an escape from the camp, the SS chose ten men to die by starvation as a punishment. One of the chosen men cried out for his wife and children. Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place. The SS accepted. The man he saved survived the war. The Catholic Church later declared Kolbe a saint.

Between Block 10 and Block 11 is a closed courtyard. At its far end stands a dark wall, rebuilt after the war. The SS shot thousands of prisoners against this wall. Today, people leave flowers and candles at its base. Some leave small stones, a Jewish custom of remembrance at a grave. Notice the windows of Block 10 beside you. Many are covered with boards, so that no one inside could see the executions in the yard.

At the edge of the camp is a low building with a chimney. This is the first gas chamber and crematorium. Parts of it were reconstructed after the war, and the museum explains this openly. Close by stands a simple wooden gallows. In 1947, after a trial in Poland, the former camp commandant Rudolf Höss was hanged here. He was executed at the place where he had ruled. Many visitors stop here for a long time without speaking.

About three kilometres away is the second part of the site, Auschwitz Two, also called Birkenau. The name comes from the Polish village of Brzezinka, which means a place of birch trees. Birch trees still grow there today. Birkenau was much larger than this first camp. Most of the killing took place there, in large gas chambers. In 1944, a railway line was extended into the camp itself. Trains arrived at a ramp inside the fence, and SS doctors decided in seconds who would live and who would die.

The numbers are hard to hold in the mind. At least 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz. About one million of them were Jews, brought from across Europe. Others were Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and people of many other nations. In 1944 alone, hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hungary were deported here. Before they left, the SS blew up the gas chambers at Birkenau to hide the evidence. Their ruins still lie where they fell.

On the 27th of January 1945, soldiers of the Soviet Red Army reached the camp. They found several thousand prisoners still alive, many of them very sick. Today, that date is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1947, the Polish parliament created the museum, and in 1979 the site joined the UNESCO World Heritage list. Survivors helped to build the memorial. For decades, many of them returned here to tell their stories to young people.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment. Look at the brick under the paint, the wire between the posts, the trees that have grown tall since then. Everything you see here was once ordinary — a door, a path, a window. That is part of what makes this place so heavy. As you walk back toward the gate, listen again to the gravel under your feet. Many people walked this same ground. Carry their names with you when you go.